Oh yeah, and sometimes I don't plug it in for days and when I turn it on the battery is still pretty much exactly where it was....that's a relatively new feature, lol.

As for the actual reason I replied again: Hard-power off = Hold the power button down until it turns off. Locking up your device once or twice is part of the ritual of modding an android device. Just be sure to never do this while flashing. I'd rather let the battery run dry than risk having to fix things the hard way. (Which isn't that hard, honestly, and there are clear instructions on XDA's Nook Color forum for how to fix this)

The SDcard booting is really handy. The performance is slightly lackluster considering the read speed of the SDcard, but, it's still very usable.

The battery life out of the box, well, I didn't get very far in using it stock. The sales rep claimed 10. I browsed a lot for the better part of an hour without a single notch coming off of the battery gauge, for what that's worth. I know that when I set it to stock speed (300min 800max) I get about 4 hours of non-stop web browsing and all that entails (flash ads, opening multiple windows, checking email, gtalk sessions). Disable WIFI and I'm sure you could double that easily for just reading. Now, when I have it OCd (800min, 1300max) I get 2.5-3 hours of non-step web browsing, etc. The same for game playing, though admittedly I only play scrabble and puzzle games. I have tried a smattering of action games and they are all playable but I can't comment on their battery consumption habits. This is all with screen at max brightness, max volume (and then some thanks to DSP manager).

The Bluetooth is also handy for transferring files, though I haven't tried it for playing music.

I use Cyanogenmod7, though some people swear by Phiremod. MIUI was just released for it...it needs a little work still but it's fully functional, it just doesn't 'scream' yet.

...and as far as any Android hacking is concerned get over to xda-developers.com forums. Nook Color is listed in the forums list. Go straight to the Development sub forum. The boot images are all easily accessible and all the tools you need are right there in a sticky at the top with very clear instructions. You can even dual boot from the eMMC. I have a dual boot bootloader that lets me choose which to boot from eMMC (primary or secondary images), SDcard (also with two images) or Recovery.

I can't say enough good things about this machine, especially when compared to other "tablets" in and round it's price range. That gap is closing in the next 6 months I'd imagine as we get into the next generation of tablets, but, for my needs this thing is fantastic. Good luck.

I'm also curious about how CM7 on a nook color was so underwhelming to you...

Granted it isn't a Xoom, but it is $249. I installed it to the eMMC, OC'd to 1.3ghz, performance governor, installed launcher pro and I gotta admit it performs nearly as well as my Evo 4G did. I play games on it and they perform great. The browser performance sucks, but, that's the browser. Dolphin is a bit better, Opera is insanely smooth. I haven't done any modding or even tweaking since the weekend I got it. It really hauls ass. Sure, the battery life isn't as awesome as it was stock, but, it also isn't painful to use...quite the opposite and the battery life is still pretty damn acceptable (unless you need hours upon hours of nonstop screen-on gaming).

But, as usual YMMV...and did...but I'm also curious why and how you had such a dismal experience.

I am scared of that, but, I think the 'pro-sumer' market is big enough to prevent prices from getting that high...and some of these tasks, especially the media centric, are not a ready fit to the latency involved in a distributed type service. Of course that latency will decrease over time, but, so long as some of us know that for a small-to-medium level investment we can nearly eliminate that latency there will be a market for it.

I mean, if we as a society have the capacity to produce an SOC capable of unseating a variety of different industry leaders in a small handful of 'one fell swoops' I'd imagine it would be negligible to produce an 'old school' motherboard, north-bridge/southbridge, cpu, ram, slots, buss, etc type system....of course economies of scale (or lack thereof) would come into play...but...if a place like Guitar Center can sell a brand new Fender brand Stratocaster that to today's standard are garbage but would be a wonder of mass-production when the first Fender Stratocasters were made for $49...(once I bought a $69 case and got a Fender Stratocaster for free), well, I think we'll be okay obtaining reasonably priced PC hardware.

...and the same for (most of the) PC market, and given my recent first (very easy) experience with DLNA the same for most "set top" equipment in general.

Except in special circumstances requiring very heavy lifting (research modeling, professional video/audio production, rendering, heavy duty compiling, etc) I'd imagine our "phones" will be picking up the slack and replacing *everything*...

...at first I was repulsed by the idea, but, while that will nearly eliminate the commodity PC market you cannot eliminate the server market. The "back end" will always need the hardware...and we'll just have to use that. It won't become unavailable, it'll just get a little more pricey...but server-grade hardware never treated me wrong, comparatively.

...and then one day that too will become an app that fits in your pocket...and then we'll revert from the cloud back to individual computing devices...give it 10-20 years and we'll be back to mainframes with a different name...democrats will become republicans will become democrats...disco will return yet again...

Sounds funny, yes, but, as I get older this 'cyclical' thing apparently has something going for it.

and "they" had a much more compelling case back then

Then you are in that narrow band of between and/or overlapping "famliliar" and "unfamiliar" that can really be intrigued by this....but again, maybe I'm just getting old. These days pessimism is my first sign that I am both alive and awake every day...

I remember having a modem directory where I had procomm, pcplus, telix, telemate and MTE.

I remember that telemate was the best (protocol selection, external protocols, text/notepad windows, dos window, etc....but I used MTE 'cuz it gave me fake MNP-5, the data compression/error correction(MTE = MNP Terminal emulator)...at 1200 and 2400bps it made a difference....I forget which v.32/42 or "bis" protocol that is....my gut tells me v.32.

I had two favorite initialization stings....one for my telecom program and one for my BBS....I remember ATX0DT being at the begining of everything for dialing... AT, attention, X0...I think that has something to do with the 'hook' setting....I think that made it keep from putting the speaker off hook until the handshake and connection were all finalized and you got your "CONNECT 2400" or whatever your string was....but I'm probably wrong. Been a while. As for my BBS initialization string, who effin' knows, I remember it being epic in length and detail.

Good times, for certain. Seems like a couple lifetimes away by now, though.

Yeah, it's cool. Yeah, it is reminiscent of my first years on "the net." But it isn't terribly impressive, I had a similar faux OS matrix-login coded in Telegard/Renegade menu files.

While it is geeky and kinda cool the appeal is limited. Anyone who isn't already familiar with this will not understand what is going on at all. Anyone who is already familiar won't be impressed.

I hate to piss on parades as I appreciate and encourage anything like this...maybe I'm just getting old.